Pupils at a community school in northern Nigeria will no longer have to sit on bare floors or crowded benches after receiving a donation of new classroom furniture from contractors building a major power line nearby. A truckload of desks and chairs arrived on Wednesday at Zaria Community School in Jaja, Kaduna State, transforming learning conditions for hundreds of children.
The donation was organized by contractors working on a power transmission expansion project for the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB). Local infrastructure projects in West Africa frequently face community friction, but officials said the initiative was aimed at building long-term goodwill in areas hosting critical national grid equipment.
Speaking during the handover ceremony, Onaga Jacob Ugochukwu, a senior project manager with TCN, said the gesture was designed to leave a lasting legacy beyond electricity pylons.”When we build transmission lines, we are building for the community. When we equip their classrooms, we are building the community itself,” Mr. Ugochukwu said. “A child who learns in comfort learns better, and that child may become the engineer who maintains these lines tomorrow.”The District Head of Jaja, Abdullahi Muhammed, praised the power company and its international backers for investing directly in the local population.”They did not just pass through our land with towers and lines. They remembered our children,” Mr. Muhammed said, promising that the community would help safeguard the power infrastructure running through their land.
The initiative highlights a growing trend among multilateral development banks and state utilities in Africa, which increasingly tie social infrastructure projects to major energy and transport developments.
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